Princeton Power Electronics Research Lab
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Toward Smaller and Smarter Power Electronics and Magnetics
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News
August 2024
The PELS MagNet project received the 2024 Power of Associations Silver Award from the American Society of Association Executives (ASAE). This is one of the two awards that was received by IEEE in 2024.
The MagNet team received the 2023 IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics Prize Paper Award! This is the 7th TPEL Prize Paper from our group in the past 7 years {2016, 2017, 2020, 2021, 2021, 2022, 2023}.
“How MagNet: Machine Learning Framework for Modeling Power Magnetic Material Characteristics,” in IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics, vol. 38, no. 12, pp. 15829-15853, Dec. 2023. Link
TPEL 2023 Prize Paper, 1st Place
“Vertical Stacked LEGO-PoL CPU Voltage Regulator,” IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics, vol. 37, no. 6, pp. 6305-6322, June 2022. Link
TPEL 2022 Prize Paper, 1st Place
“Unified Models for Coupled Inductors Applied to Multiphase PWM Converters,” IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics, vol. 36, no. 12, pp. 14155-14174, Dec. 2021. Link
TPEL 2021 Prize Paper, 1st Place
“Differential Power Processing for Ultra-Efficient Data Storage,” IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics, vol. 36, no. 4, pp. 4269-4286, April 2021. Link
TPEL 2021 Prize Paper, 2nd Place
“Multicell Reconfigurable Multi-Input Multi-Output Energy Router Architecture,” IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics, vol. 35, no. 12, pp. 13210-13224, Dec. 2020. Link
TPEL 2020 Prize Paper, 2nd Place
“Multitrack Power Conversion Architecture,” IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics, vol. 32, no. 1, pp. 325-340, Jan. 2017. Link
TPEL 2017 Prize Paper, 2nd Place
“A Systematic Approach to Modeling Impedances and Current Distribution in Planar Magnetics,” IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics , vol.31, no.1, pp. 560–580, Jan. 2016. Link
TPEL 2016 Prize Paper, 1st Place
June 2024
Prof. Chen gave a mini-keynote speech at COMPEL’24 on Power Electronics Turing Test.
April 2024
Prof. Chen gave a IEEE PELS Distinguished Seminar at Georgia Tech and visited Prof. Deepak Divan's Center for Distributed Energy.
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March 2024
Prof. Chen was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure effective July 2024.
Shukai, Mian, and Tanuj received the Outstanding Presentation Award at APEC 2024.
November 2023
Another wonderful ECCE 2023!
Congratulations to Haoran Li and Shukai Wang for winning the First Place Award at the ECCE Best Student Demonstration, and Jaeil Baek and Youssef Elasser for winning the First Place IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics Prize Paper Award.
Daniel Zhou and Hanyu Liu received the IEEE PELS John G. Kassakian Fellowship.
Prof. Chen received the Richard Bass Award.
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October 2023
Hsin Cheng received the IROS Best Paper Finalist on Robot Mechanisms and Design with his paper eViper: A Scalable Platform for Untethered Modular Soft Robots. This is our group's first prize paper from an international flagship robotics conference. This work is in collaboration with Prof. Naveen Verma, Prof. James Sturm, and Prof. Sigurd Wagner. Congrats, Hsin!
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Daniel Zhou received the 2023 Princeton SEAS Honorific Fellowship!
Mian Liao received the 2023 New Jersey Economic Development Authority Wind Institute Fellowship!
Tanuj Sen received the 2023 Princeton ECE Graduate Student Outstanding Teaching Award!
July 2023
Jaeil and Youssef received the 2022 IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics Prize Paper Award!
June 2023
Prof. Chen received the 2023 IEEE PELS Richard M. Bass Outstanding Young Power Electronics Engineer Award for contributions to the modeling, design and application of high-performance power electronic systems. This award recognizes outstanding achievement in power electronics by an engineer less than 35 years of age.
April 2023
Prof. Chen joined a virtual panel at POLITICO Europe Tech Summit on Clean Energy and Sustainable Computing - Green & cost-effective tech: can Europe have both?.
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Ping Wang graduated from Princeton Power Electronics Research Lab with an outstanding thesis and a wonderful final public oral! Thanks for all the contributions. Wish Ping continued success in his future endeavor!
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March 2023
Wonderful reunion at APEC with Prof. John Kassakian!
Three outstanding presentation awards received by Tanuj Sen, Youssef Elasser, and Shukai Wang!
Keep the momentum going with 48V-VRM and MagNet project.
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Prof. Chen visited Harvard SEAS and talked about power electronics and sustainability.
Feb 2023
Daniel Zhou and Mian Liao received the Rao R. Tummala Best Paper Award at 3D-PEIM with their paper “Power Systems on Chiplet: Inductor-Linked Multi-Output Switched-Capacitor Multi-Rail Power Delivery on Chiplets,”. This is our group's first prize paper award from the IEEE Electronics Packaging Society, Congratulations!
Prof. Chen presented an invited review paper “Design Considerations for 48-V VRM: Architecture, Magnetics, and Performance Tradeoffs” with Dr. Shuai Jiang, Prof. Jose Cobos, and Prof. Brad Lehman.
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June 2022
Two papers from our group received 2021 IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics Prize Paper Awards!
M. Chen and C. R. Sullivan, “Unified Models for Coupled Inductors Applied to Multiphase PWM Converters,” IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics, vol. 36, no. 12, pp. 14155-14174, Dec. 2021. Link
TPEL 2021 Prize Paper, 1st Place
P. Wang, Y. Chen, J. Yuan, R. C. N. Pilawa-Podgurski and M. Chen, “Differential Power Processing for Ultra-Efficient Data Storage,” IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics, vol. 36, no. 4, pp. 4269-4286, April 2021. Link
TPEL 2021 Prize Paper, 2nd Place
May 2022
Hsin Cheng, Yenan Chen, Zhiwu Zheng and Prakhar Kumar received the Best Poster Award at the ICRA 2022 Bio-inspired and Biohybrid (Cyborg) Systems workshop with the paper ‘‘Bioinspired Inchworm Crawling and Jumping of Piezoelectric Soft Robots".
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April 2022
Prof. Chen received the Princeton SEAS E. Lawrence Keyes, Jr./Emerson Electric Co. Junior Faculty Award.
March 2022
Ping and Hsin received the outstanding presentation awards at APEC 2022. Congratulations!
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January 2022
Two papers accepted to IEEE Transations on Power Electronics!
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November 2021
Congratulations to Jaeil Baek and Youssef Elasser on winning two top prizes in a row - the Best Paper Award at Open Compute Project Future Technologies Symposium, and the Best Student Demonstration Award (1st Place) at IEEE ECCE 2021! This is the first OCP best paper award, and the third ECCE best demo awards (all 1st Places) received by our lab (2014, 2019, and 2021).
Congratulations to Haoran Li, Mian Liao, and Shukai Wang on receiving the honorable mention in the software track! The MagNet team is ourstanding!
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Congratulations to Evan Dogariu for winning the best undergraduate presentation award at the Andlinger Center Annual Meeting 2021! Great job Evan!
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The official Mag-Net website is online. The goal of the MagNet project is to redefine how power magnetics was studied and modeled with a data-driven approach. If you are interested in contributing to MagNet, please check our GitHub repository for the latest update.
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September 2021
Ping Wang's paper - “Analysis and Design of Series Voltage Compensator for Differential Power Processing” - accepted to IEEE Journal of Selected and Emerging Topics of Power Electronics!
August 2021
Daniel Zhou's paper - “Reluctance based Dynamic Models for Multiphase Coupled Inductor Buck Converters” - accepted to IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics!
July 2021
Yenan Chen's paper - “Multicell Reconfigurable Multi-Input Multi-Output Energy Router Architecture” - received the 2nd Place Prize Paper Award from IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics in 2020. This is the third Transactions prize paper awards from Princeton PowerLab (2016, 2017, 2020)!
Ping Wang's paper - “Stochastic Power Loss Analysis of Differential Power Processing” - accepted to IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics! This paper is in collaboration with Prof. Robert Pilawa at UC Berkeley and Prof. Philip Krein at UIUC.
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Prof. Chen gave an invited seminar - “Power Architecture and Magnetics to Unlock the Potential of WBG Semiconductor Devices” at the Power Electronics Workshop of the CEI Annual Meeting of Polytechnic University of Madrid.
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Prof. Chen and Prof. Sullivan's paper “Unified Models for Coupled Inductors Applied to Multiphase PWM Converters” accepted to IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics!
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June 2021
Proposal “Machine Learning for Power Electronics-enabled Power Systems: A Unified ML Platform for Power Electronics, Power Systems, and Data Science” selected for funding by C3.ai DTI.
Proposal “MagNet: Transforming Power Magnetics Design with Machine Learning Tools and SPICE Simulations” selected for funding by Princeton CSML DataX program.
Proposal “Circuits and Integrated Magnetics for Vertical Power Delivery of Microprocessors and IoT Devices” selected for funding by Princeton Innovation Fund for Industrial Collaborations.
May 2021
Daniel Zhou received the prestigious Canada NSERC Alexander Graham Bell Graduate Scholarship, awarded to the top-ranked Postgraduate Scholarships-Doctoral (PGS D) applicants. Congratulations, Daniel!
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April 2021
Prof. Chen published an invited paper - “Coupled Inductors for Fast-Response High-Density Power Delivery: Discrete and Integrated” with Prof. Charles Sullivan at the IEEE Custom Integrated Circuits Conference (CICC). In addition to review the state-of-the-art of integrated and discrete coupled inductors, we introduce a fundamental, systematic way to interpret and quantify the advantages of multiphase coupled inductor in small, fast voltage regulators.
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Prof. Chen gave an invited talk - “Traditional and Machine-Learning based Magnetic Core Loss Modeling” at PSMA Power Technology Roadmap Forum together with Prof. Charles Sullivan of Dartmouth. Check out the slides HERE.
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January 2021
The graduate course taught by Prof. Chen - “ELE581:Principles of Power Electronics” - was recognized as “Princeton Engineering Commendation List for Outstanding Teaching” in Fall 2020! We are doing very well in pandemic. Thanks Haoran and Daniel for TAing this course!
Prof. Chen gave an invited talk at IEEE PELS DMC Webinar Series. It was a great pleasure to share our latest research on high frequency magnetics design and machine learning. Check out the slides HERE.
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November 2020
Yenan Chen received the Best Paper Award, and Haoran Li received the Student Registration Award for High Quality Paper at COMPEL 2020. Congrats, Yenan and Haoran!
Check out the COMPEL presentations HERE
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October 2020
Yenan Chen received the Postdoc Researcher Presentation Award at the 2020 Princeton Andlinger Center Annual Meeting. Congrats, Yenan!
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September 2020
Prof. Chen and Prof. Poor's invited paper on power electronics at the grid edge published on IEEE Electrification Magazine! This paper describes a bottom-up approach toward the future smart grid with high frequency power electronics at the grid edge. #Paper
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Ping Wang's paper on differential power processing and ultra-efficient data storage accepted to IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics! Congrats, Ping! This paper defines a new way of delivering power losslessly to a large number of modular units at ultra high energy efficiency. #Paper
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DOE ARPA-E GAMOW. We will collaborate with Princeton Fusion Systems, United Silicon Carbide, and NREL to develop extreme performance radio frequency (RF) power amplifiers for fusion applications. A great opportunity to push ourselves into high voltage, high frequency, high power area with wide-bandgap devices!
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Prof. Chen gave an invited talk at the Power Electronics Systems Group of ETH, Zurich. It was a great pleasure to share our latest research with the Kolar Group at ETH.
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August 2020
Ming Liu's paper on multilayer hierarchical battery balancer architecture accepted to IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics! Congrats, Ming! This paper points the direction towards multicell smarter, smaller, and more efficiency power electronics. #Paper
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July 2020
#CoupL is online! CoupL is an online software tool for designing multiphase coupled magnetics. This tool was developed by Seungjae under the supervision of Haoran and Minjie!
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June 2020
#MagNet is online! MagNet is an open-source software platform which explores machine learning methods for magnetic modeling. Github repository is here #Github. Congratulations Haoran and Seungjae!
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May 2020
Yenan Chen's paper on reconfigurable multi-input multi-output energy router architecture accepted to IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics! Congrats, Yenan! This paper points a promising direction towards the future Power FPGA. #Paper
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Prof. Chen gave an invited talk at the IEEE High Frequency Magnetics Workshop. #Slides
Ping Wang presented his work on performance limits of differential power processing at OCP 2020. This work explores the fundamental principles of differential power processing and reveals important theoretical findings. Congratulations Ping! #Paper
Jaeil Baek presented his work on LEGO-PoL converter at OCP 2020. This work shows an high performance topology for very high current CPU/GPU voltage regulators. This work is also published at APEC 2020. Congratulations Jaeil! #Paper
April 2020
PowerLab launched a collaboration with pSemi, a Murata company focused on semiconductor integration.
Youssef Elasser received the prestigious NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. Congratulations, Youssef!
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February 2020
Prof. Chen became a Senior Member of IEEE.
Daniel Zhou and Haoran Li join Princeton PowerLab. Welcome!
December 2019
Powerlab will lead a project sponsored by DOE ARPA-E DIFFERENTIATE program to develop a machine learning based magnetic modeling tool in collaboration with Dartmouth College and Plexim. We will use machine learning to enhance our understanding about magnetics. A great opportunity to DIFFERENTIATE ourselves!
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November 2019
The data center power delivery work from our group was selected among nine inventions this year in Princeton University for the prestigious event Celebrate Princeton Innovation 2019. Our Energy Processing Unit (EPU) was featured on the coverpage of the whole event!
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October 2019
Ping's work on ultra-efficiency date center power delivery won the First Place of the Student Demo Competition in ECCE 2019. This is the first demonstration of a fully-functioning HDD server with series stacked power delivery architecture. We look for new ways to power the “brain” of human society. Stay tuned!
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Ping Wang presented his work on Series Stacked power delivery architecture for HDDs at ECCE 2019. The HDD server Ping built achieved over 99.4% efficiency with over 640W/in3 power density. #Paper, #Slides
Ming Liu presented his work on 13.56 MHz wireless coupled battery balancer with online impedance spectroscopy capability at ECCE 2019. The 13.56 MHz battery balancer Ming built can perform precise online EIS up to 500 kHz. #Paper, #Slides
Jaeil Baek presented his work on Grid-Interface PFC at ECCE 2019. Jaeil proposed a reverse feeding strategy to extend the hold-up time of grid interface PFC. #Paper, #Slides
Yenan Chen presented his work on LEGO-MIMO architecture at ECCE 2019. The LEGO-MIMO archietcture can be freely extended to cover wide operation range, just like playing LEGO bricks. #Paper, #Slides
Yueshi Guan presented his work on ultra-high-step-down converter at ECCE 2019. The MSP-LEGO archietcture can be freely extended to cover wide input/output range and high voltage conversion ratio. #Paper, #Slides
July 2019
The undergraduate course taught by Prof. Chen - “ELE481:Principles of Power Electronics” - was recognized as “Princeton Engineering Commendation List for Outstanding Teaching” in Spring 2019!
PowerLab launched a collaboration with Intel and Google. We are building high performance power electronics to support future computer infrastructures!
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PowerLab won the Campus-as-Lab project from Princeton University Office of the Dean for Research to build a nano-grid testbed in Andlinger Center. The nano-grid will connect roof-top PV, second-life EV batteries, and EV chargers as an integrated platform to support grid-interface power electronics research.
June 2019
As the faculty lead, Prof. Chen organized and hosted the Rapid Switch Workshop as the Effiliate Program Annual Meeting of the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment.
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Jaeil Baek presented his work on LEGO-PoL architecture in COMPEL 2019. Jaeil built a 54V-1.8V 300A PoL converter with 93.1% peak efficiency. #Paper, #Poster
Yenan Chen presented his work on Turbo MMC architecture in COMPEL 2019. Yenan proposed a novel MMC architecture with minimum submodule capacitor size. #Paper, #Poster
Ping Wang presented his work on small signal modeling of DPP architecture in COMPEL 2019. Ping developed an analytical approach to modeling small signal dynamics of DPP architectures. #Paper, #Poster
Youssef Elasser presented his work on sparse operation of multi-winding magnetics in COMPEL 2019. Youssef investigated the performance limit of planar multiwinding magnetics in sparse operation. #Paper, #Poster
April 2019
Ming Liu's paper on reactance steering network and dual-band wireless power transfer accepted to IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics! Congrats, Ming! #Paper
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March 2019
Yenan Chen won the Outstanding Presentation Award in APEC 2019!
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Ping Wang presented his work on ultra-efficiency data center power delivery architecture in Open Compute Project (OCP) Global Summit. #Paper, #Poster
February 2019
PowerLab won the First Place out of nine teams in the 2019 Princeton Innovation Forum with our research on Ultra Efficient Energy Processing Unit (EPU) for future data centers. Big congrats to Yenan Chen, Youssef Elasser, and Ping Wang! A new venture starts!
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Prof. Chen received the NSF CAREER Award for his proposal ‘‘Granular Power Electronics at the Grid Edge". More interesting research coming!
January 2019
Dr. Jaeil Baek joins Princeton PowerLab from KAIST. Welcome, Jaeil!
Prof. Chen's proposal on 48V-1V point-of-load power converter wins Princeton SEAS Innovation Grant.
August 2018
Prof. Chen's journal paper - “Multitrack Power Conversion Architecture” - wins the 2nd Place Prize Paper Award from IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics in 2017. This is the second journal prize paper award from Princeton PowerLab!
Ping's work on multiport power converter published on IEEE Workshop on Control and Modeling for Power Electronics (COMPEL). Ping is working towards flexible, programmable, granular, and adaptive power converters (Power FPGA). #Poster, #Paper
June 2018
Ming's work on Reactance Steering Network and Wireless Power Transfer published on IEEE Workshop on Emerging Technologies: Wireless Power (WoW). This work shows how to design a dual-band wireless power transfer systems that can cover both 100kHz and 13.56 MHz. #Slides, #Paper
Prof. Chen's work on Multitrack PFC published on IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics (TPEL). #Slides, #Paper
April 2018
Dr. Yenan Chen joins PowerLab from Zhejiang University. Welcome, Yenan!
December 2017
Prof. Chen's proposal as a PI “Multi-Input Multi-Output (MIMO) Bi-directional DC Power Delivery Architecture for Smart Homes” was selected for funding by Princeton E-ffiliates Partnership.
Prof. Chen's proposal as a co-PI “Engineering the Invisible: Probing the Limits of Solar Powered Com-Towers” was funded by American Tower through Princeton Andlinger Center.
November 2017
Our new patent “Switched-Capacitor Split Drive Transformer Power Conversion Circuit”, US patent No. 9,825,545 (with Prof. Khurram Afridi at and Prof. David Perreault) was issued on Nov. 21, 2017. More innovations coming!
Prof. Chen gave a speech about Transporation Electrification at the Andlinger Center E-ffiliates Annual Meeting. Lots of opportunities for power electronics in EVs and Transportation Electrification!
October 2017
Prof. Chen's paper - “A switched-winding transformer with low quiescent loss to meet the level VI efficiency standard at high power density” - was published at IEEE ECCE.
Dr. Ming Liu joins PowerLab from University of Michigan and Shanghai Jiao Tong University Joint Institute. Welcome, Ming!
September 2017
Prof. Chen's proposal as a co-PI - “Extreme Efficiency 240 VAC to Load Data Center Power Delivery Topologies and Control” - was selected for funding by DOE ARPA-E as part of the CIRCUITS program as a three-year project. This project is in collaboration with Prof. Robert Pilawa-Podgurski's at University of California Berkeley.
Fida Niway joins PowerLab as an undergraduate working on his senior thesis about wireless power transfer. Welcome, Fida!
August 2017
Prof. Chen's proposal as a co-PI - “Electrification of Transportation for Energy Storage and Smart Mobility” - was seleted for funding in a recent Call for Proposals for Innovative Research in Energy and the Environment from Princeton Andlinger Center.
Prof. Chen's journal paper - “A Systematic Approach to Modeling Impedances and Current Distribution in Planar Magnetics” - wins the 1st Place Prize Paper Award from IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics in 2016. This is the first journal prize paper award from Princeton PowerLab!
Abdul, Alex, and Fida's research on solar powered wireless charging platform for drones was featured on Princeton SEAS Webpage.
Ping Wang joins PowerLab from Shanghai Jiaotong University. Welcome, Ping!
July 2017
Prof. Chen's paper - “Magnetics Design and Optimization for Tapped-Series-Capacitor (TSC) Power Converters” - was published at IEEE COMPEL.
June 2017
Abdulghafar Al Tair, Alex Ju and Fida Newaj join PowerLab.
May 2017
Prof. Chen gave a speech about at the ExxonMobil Global Longer Range Research Meeting at Princeton
March 2017
Prof. Chen's proposal - “Developing a Smart Energy Router for Flexible and Efficient DC Power Distribution in Smart Homes and Buildings” - wins Siebel Energy Institute 2017 Research Grant.
February 2017
Minjie Chen joins Princeton Department of Electrical Engineering and Andlinger Center for Energy and Environment as an Assistant Professor.